


Things Hidden

by Lafayette1777



Category: Cody Banks, Malcolm in the Middle
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Malcolm in the CIA, Multi, Observing the lives of his brothers, Reconnecting with the family, Returning home for the first time in years, Trying to figure out how to live his life, multi-chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It's time to return to the identity he once knew, and the identity he must learn to remember again. Twelve years after leaving home, Malcolm comes back to the family, only to find that they're not quite ready to come back to him.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of a multi-chapter crossover between Malcolm in the Middle and Cody Banks. It centers mostly around the Malcolm universe, but adding in elements of Cody Banks. All will be explained in coming chapters, I hope. Reviews much appreciated!

This is the worst part. Even he can't lie to himself about that.

Her eyes are beginning to water. She leans her head up to sniffle, and he can see the overhead light glint off her now wet mascara. It's the middle of the fucking night and she's forgotten to take off her make-up before bed. Her hair's still perfectly styled, floating over bathrobe wrapped shoulders. 

“Lucien, I...” she trails off.

“My name's not Lucien,” he states, matter-of-factly. “It's Cody.”

No mind that that's a lie also. It might as well be true, in this expensive flat in this strange city that's about to get a whole lot more exciting the moment he steps out that door. 

Tears begin to drip down her face. She can't seem to find words, so he steps forward and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Look, Marie, I'm sorry that what we had wasn't real. This wasn't my decision. That's more here than you know, more than you'd ever want to know. I have to go now. You'll be safe, but I won't see you again. I'm sorry it had to happen this way, because it wasn't fair to you. But it's for the greater good, I promise.”

One blonde hair sticks to her face with moisture. She's pretty, but he doesn't feel anything toward her. This relationship was predetermined, and not by any omnipotent being. He's so detached at this point he has to force himself to be guilty, and only when he's ready. Now is not the time to feel bad about this. Now is the time to say the little speech he has perfected and get the hell out. Other lives depend on him. Her broken heart will heal. 

“You're going?” she finally chokes out.

He nods. “I have to. Your information is going to be useful. I'm sorry.”

He turns then, grabbing his backpack, and pulling the gun out of the front pocket. After checking that it's loaded and ready to go, he shoves it in the underarm holster concealed by his jacket. 

There's no trouble on the stairs, and the apartment building's lobby is empty. On the street he takes a right turn and stays to the darkened part of the sidewalk. It doesn't do much, as the ancient city's streets are narrow and lit by yellow light. Lost tourists try to decipher the french signs and a few drunken regulars stumble around the Moulin Rouge, as if they were Toulouse-Lautrec himself. He ignores all of them and keeps walking, head down, very aware of the thump of the gun, colliding gently with his side with each step. 

A van turns the corner ahead of him. Unmarked, dark colored. Could be anyone. Could be an exterminator. A family of eight. Could be the CIA, arriving to pick him up. Could be the opposition, ready to chop his limbs off one by one and then shoot him in the face. 

He changes directions and quickens his pace. The van follows him, pulling up slowly beside him. 

“Bonjour,” says the driver cheerfully.

Cody lets out a sigh. When he looks up, there's a shotgun aimed at his throat. He doesn't think, just lets his knees crumple under him, pushes himself forward three inches closer to the van, and then stands back up again suddenly. The shotgun goes off as his shoulder smacks into the barrel, leaving his ears ringing but his body unharmed. The driver's too stunned to keep his fingers solid, and Cody yanks the gun from his grasp.

He doesn't wait to see what else they're packing before diving back into the night. He slips into an alleyway, not shortening his pace for a second as he uses a trashcan to boost himself up onto a brick wall, running next to several backstreets. He's short, but just tall enough to spring up onto a rooftop, feet silent against the ancient materials. He leaps from roof to roof, just another shadow in Montmartre. 

Only a few minutes lapse before he's being followed again, his pursuer's footsteps just barely audible over his own breathing and the unending din of the city. He throws the shot gun far to his left, hopefully drawing their attention away. He fears the moment when he'll run out of rooftops, or the jump will be too far. He's in a tight spot, but he consoles himself that he's seen worse. 

His heart beats with the terrifying thrill of the chase. 

Cody pushes himself across another divide, then lets himself fall to his knees, folding his body into a tiny crack where old building meets new building. It's so dark in the crevice he can't see his hands, but he can hear footsteps pause in confusion over his hiding place, and then a whispered conversation he can't make out any words in. Finally, the thuds of heavy shoes drift away, and he loudly lets out his breath. 

Three quarters of a second later, hands grip his ankles, and he's yanked roughly from the hidden spot, and back onto the slanting roof. Two unfamiliar, angry faces stare down at him. 

“Balls,” is all he says. They pull him to his feet, pat him down, and inevitably find most of the various weapons he has stashed on him. If there is one thing his upbringing prepared him for, it's how to hide your valuables. 

“They'll be here any second, you know.”

His captors don't reply.

“You won't get far with me.”

They drag him forward, his feet barely touching the surface, across the textured rooftops. He can see the Eiffel Tower in his peripheral vision. It's glowing blue for some occasion he can't remember. They walk without hurry, toward some destination hidden in darkness in front of them.

He can feel the vibrations before he sees anything.

Cody and his captors pause just long enough so that when he turns his head back he can see the charge, a pack of agents lead by his very own handler. A van is following from below.

Cody looks up at the man on his left. “Told you.”

Veronica Miles' face becomes clear when she's thirty feet out, though he knew it was her just from the rhythm of her sprinting gait. She's armed, sites already trained on the man to his right. Cody flexes his bicep experimentally, but he is still tight in their grip. 

“Hand him over,” Veronica commands. “There's no escape.”

They seem to accept that. He can hear the air stir as the two men exchange looks. They turn to face the posse of CIA agents. It's mostly darkness behind them, but he can sense a gap somewhere close, a forgotten space between two buildings. How close, he can't tell. 

“Let him go,” Veronica says clearly, across the ten yard divide. 

“Okay,” one of them says. The hands on his arms tighten, pulling him backward and off balance, his face to the stars. For a second, he is in limbo, and then they release him. 

He only manages to flail for a moment, and then he's in empty space. _So there's that gap._ The wind fills his ears, and he can hear his name screeched. He falls for an eternity, but they can't be higher than four stories up. Gravity carries him through the night air, until finally the earth meets him.

He crumples on impact with the concrete, and his mind goes blank.


	2. The Awake

It begins with a tingling in his hands, a kind of prickly feeling that isn't comfortable, nor uncomfortable. It spreads up his forearms, to his shoulders, and into his chest, where it spreads throughout his body. After a while, he feels as though he has the strength to open his eyes, as he now realizes they have been closed. 

The room is blurry, light colors blending together in meaningless globs. He pushes his eyelids open further, things begin to come into focus. A sunny window on his right. His feet, splayed out before him under white blankets. A terrible pain in his limbs. A woman in the chair next to him, looking a down at a book with her reading glasses dipping down her nose. She doesn't look up until he opens his mouth and chokes out three twisted syllables. 

“Veronica?”

She looks up in surprise, eyes drifting around the room, searching for the source of her name. When her gaze falls on his alert face, her eyes grow wide. She's forty-four now, ten years older than him, and has been his handler for almost every operation since he joined the agency a few years after university. 

He glances around the room, the fuzzy layer over his brain beginning to recede. He's hooked up to all matter of machines, machines that he can only assume were keeping him alive.

His lips are dry and cracked. “How long?”

“Four weeks,” she says, clearly still in shock. 

“Thanks for not pulling the plug,” he murmurs. “I need morphine, please.”

With that, he rolls over, asleep.

m m m

When he wakes again, he can see the calendar on the wall, and he focuses on that for a while, before bothering to look around the room again. 

The date marked is the second of May, and he searches his mind for the last day he wasn't lying in this bed. The Montmartre operation...yes. March twenty-eighth. It had been a warm night for the season. In the morning, Parisians would've been greeted with a mere sprinkling of frost.

Slowly, the events of the evening came back to him. 

_Shambles._

He pushes it all out of his mind and his eyes are attracted to the whiteboard attached to the wall. He squints to make out the letters, written in green marker. The letters are neat, almost cheerful in handwriting. He imagines a teenage girl scrawling them on the wall in her room, not a seasoned doctor or nurse. 

_Emergency contact:_

_V.Miles_

The family members section is left blank. 

Veronica enters a while later, coffee cup and new novel in hand. They meet eyes and he can tell that for a while there, she really thought she'd lost him. 

“How're you feeling?”

He checks, and finds the pain in his extremities to have dulled somewhat, but most of them are contained in plaster casings and he doesn't have the strength to move them. 

“Okay,” he replies. “What did they have to say about all this?”

“What do you mean, 'all of this'?”

“The operation. I fucked it up. I nearly killed myself. Who knows what kind of reverberations that botched night could cause.”

“Jesus, Cody, you just spent a month in a coma with half the bones in your body broken. Fucking relax.”

He tries to dislodge his angry expression. The heart monitor begins to return to a normal-ish rhythm. 

“Am I fired?”

“Nope,” she sips her coffee without taking her eyes off him.

“Suspended?”

“Not officially. They don't want you coming into work until you're completely healed though. I know you're going to anyway, but they don't.”

“Then what are they gonna do to me?”

“Cody, one screw up doesn't erase twelve years of perfection.”

He can't formulate a reply for that. 

She smiles in some attempt at comfort, and pats his leg gently. He still winces. “It'll be fine, Cody. Things'll go back to normal after a while.”

m m m

Everyone who comes into the room calls him some variation of “Cody” or “Mr. Banks.” Years of this says he should be used to it, but it's starting to make him feel weird, makes him squirm just a little in his bed, when he has the energy. 

He spends a lot of time sleeping. In the interim, a physical therapist has him do small exercises with the limbs that aren't bound tight and immovable. But he tires easily, and it bothers him to the point of frustration. Around the sleep and the irritation, he reads, as he's always done when he needs to not think about his life for a while. 

Two weeks after May 2nd, he's shaken into consciousness by Veronica. His heart is racing, and cold sweat has broken out on the back of his neck. 

“You alright?”

He says something very intelligent, along the lines of “Uh?”

“You were having a nightmare, I think.”

He can't remember his dream. But he can feel the residual panic, pieces of fear and sadness and a feeling he never thought he'd feel, that he'd forgotten the ache to. 

Homesickness.

“Did I say anything?” he asks. 

“Mostly nonsense. You might've said 'home' or 'stay away' or something.”

He nods solemnly. He knows that the seed's been planted now. The creeping under his skin has been identified. 

The next morning, he asks Veronica to bring him his laptop. He drafts an email to the higher-ups, asking for a leave of absence for further recuperation.


	3. The Hurt

He enters Tallahassee, trying to remember and forget all at once. 

The cab driver has a window open, but all it does is stir up the heavy, humid July air that clings to every surface. With each blink, his eyelids stick together uncomfortably. He's familiar with this weather, this sticky feeling. He knows that after a summer spent sprawled outdoors, you barely feel it. As it happens, though, he's lost all conditioning living around Langley, but more often abroad. The four months in Indonesia may have come close to this, but it was too long ago. 

“It's here,” he tells the driver, who leaves him on the corner, already drenched in sweat. He's beginning to seriously regret this decision.

The only way he knew he'd been able to find this address was to search local arrest records, but there hadn't been any in the last five years, so he had to delve into some city records using CIA resources, until he finally found the duplex bungalow. It's typical Florida house, painted a soft green with white embellishments and a metal, rusting porch. Like everything, it seems to be physically weighted down by the amount of water in the air. 

He leans down carefully to sling his duffel bag over his shoulder. He faces every movement with caution, every since he started walking around again. They tell him he's still a little fragile, not quite back in alignment, and he feels it with each step. That once complete confidence in his ability is diminished. There's a gun, wrapped up in a beige jacket, inside his shoulder bag.

He gives himself just a moment of preparation before heading up the walk. Any longer and he'll be on the next flight back to Washington Reagan. 

One breath allowed on the stoop, and he presses the doorbell. Nothing happens, so he assumes it doesn't work and pulls open the screen door to knock instead. Three seconds later, the front door opens wide, and a woman is standing on the threshold. 

Her skin is light brown, her hair wavy and darker. The skin around her eyes and mouth is crinkled, presumably from smiling often and large. Her eyes are as dark as her hair, and she's wearing loose jeans and a Rolling Stones shirt. 

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies. “Eh, who are you?”

“Does Reese Wilkerson live here?”

“Um, yes.”

She looks hesitant, so he pulls the trump card. “I'm from the government.”

She gets that _Oh, Lord_ expression on her that seemed to be perfectly frozen on his mother's face for most of his adolescence. 

She calls over her shoulder, “Reese! There's a guy here.”

“Hold up, I gotta finish seasoning this.”

“He's a cop.”

There's a murmured swear, and then sounds of movement. A second later, Reese appears. He looks very much the same as he did last time they were together, except with a shorter hair cut and a thinner face. The two men just stare at each other for a few moments, and then Reese reaches forward and grabs him. 

He'll admit that he was expecting to get hit, but what Reese does surprises him beyond words. He pulls him into the tightest hug they've ever exchanged, and he reciprocates before his brain has caught up to this new event. 

Reese leans back for a moment, looks into his eyes, and says simply, “Malcolm,” as if remembering what it feels like to say his name. 

Then he punches him so hard in the stomach that it knocks Malcolm straight on his ass. 

The brawl lasts a good minute, with the two men rolling around on the sidewalk, smashing each other in the ribs and occasionally getting in a face shot, until the woman breaks it up and drags them both inside.


	4. The Familiar

The bathroom is the shaped like a shoebox, and about the same size, too. When sitting on the edge of the tub, like Malcolm has taken to, one's knees are thoroughly pressed against the cabinet beneath the sink. Fluorescent light bulbs illuminate the room, as the tiny window peeking out over the shower curtain does almost nothing to let in the setting sun's rays. 

He can't complain, though; he's mostly just immensely glad to have made it into the air conditioning. 

The woman's name is Dani Kilcher, aged thirty-seven, and she hands him an icepack wrapped in a terrycloth kitchen rag. She hands another to Reese, giving them both withering stares. She recedes to the threshold, just as Malcolm begins to press the cold to his split lip. He's running a systems check every other second, attempting to make sure his supposedly fragile body is still managing. There's blood running into his eyes from a cut above his brow, and he wipes at that with a square of toilet paper. 

Reese finally breaks the silence. “So, you're back?” His question isn't cold, but he's not smiling, either. 

“I think so,” he replies.

“Why?” 

“Why'd go or why'd I come back?”

“Would you answer either one?”

He thinks about it for a while, not caring discuss one of these questions. So he doesn't. “I don't know why I came back.”

This doesn't seem to satisfy Reese. “You don't need money, do you?”

He shakes his head quick. “That's not it.”

“Good, because you came to the wrong brother if that's what you wanted,” Reese smiles slightly at this, which Malcolm thinks is a good sign, though he has no idea what he's smiling about. 

“You work for the government?” Dani asks.

“The Central Intelligence Agency,” he mutters.

“Really?” says Reese, eyebrows raised. “That's some deep shit.”

“Sometimes, yes,” he responds vaguely. 

Silence falls again, but this time Dani cuts through it. “Well, dinner's ready, isn't it, Reese?”

“Should be,” he answers, and still looking at her, asks, “Outside?”

“Why not?”

Twenty minutes later they're back in the oppressive heat, lightened only slightly by the low angle of the sun. Malcolm quickly sheds his suit jacket, rolling up his shirtsleeves. Reese and Dani seem to have accepted the heat, having spent the summer in it's grasp, and sit as though it is a pleasant autumn day. 

The tiny patio has little, wilted weeds climbing through the cracks, with a few tired looking trees overhanging the cheap metal furniture. A thin, swampy forest backs up to the minimal yard, but he can see through it to more houses and a busy road on the other side. Reese's food seems to overshadow all of this, though, as it does with most things. Elegantly prepared roast chicken, with perfectly seasoned mashed potatoes. Iced tea to chill it all on the way down. They don't speak for several minutes, all too intent on putting as much food down their throats as possible. 

After a while, though, they begin to lean back in their seats to digest. Finally, a soft, coolish breeze ruffles the top of Malcolm's hair, drying a few small drops of sweat along his hairline. Reese is laying back relaxedly, an arm around the back of Dani's chair. 

Malcolm looks at them for a moment, and works up the courage to ask, “So, how'd you guys meet?”

Dani smiles slightly at his—Malcolm can see happiness is a far more natural expression for her, rather than the kind of inquisitive hostility she's been applying to him throughout the evening. 

“He asked me if my last name was California,” she says mischievously. “My name tag at Starbucks only said 'Dani.'”

“Cut me some slack,” Reese tells her in good humor. “I hadn't seen a woman in five years. It seemed like a conversation starter.”

"Oh, so I was just a primal need?" she laughs, and Reese rolls his eyes in exasperation.

Malcolm raises a questioning eyebrow, trying and failing to be non judgmental.

“I'd just gotten out of state penn,” Reese answers shamelessly. “Five years for armed robbery.”

Come to think of it, Malcolm realizes this isn't a complete shock. Not just because he knows his brother, but because he has a wisp of memory from that last Christmas, how Reese had been meeting with his lawyer around the rest of the chaos. Malcolm'd been gone before the trial, hadn't found out the verdict before now.

“Just five years? That's lucky.”

He looks to Dani, who seems unfazed by Reese's criminal record. Clearly, they've both had time to come to terms with it. 

“I was lucky,” Reese confirms. 

“Which is why he's been extremely law abiding since,” Dani finishes. 

“Excuse me?” Malcolm can't help but exclaim—the idea of a clean Reese is nearly impossible to fathom. 

Reese smirks familiarly at his expression. “Yeah, got a respectable construction job and everything.”

It's like living in a dream, Malcolm realizes. This whole evening has all been a little surreal, like a look into the future. Reese is a different person than he was, yet Malcolm still feels like a twenty-two year old kid, staring ahead from the last time he was with his family, into this strange, impossible future. A future where everyone has become adults and he's still a wayward teenager, granted though, with a fancy degree and a position in the government, mind you. Not to mention he's talking to his brother, a man he hasn't seen in over a decade, like a grown up. Like someone he's just become acquainted with. He honestly refuses to believe that this is the same person that accidentally set an RV on fire at Burning Man all those years ago.

A few minutes later the sun is nearly set, and so they begin to gather plates and silverware and head back inside. Malcolm is the last to enter, carrying three wine glasses and a steak knife for the chicken, and Dani and Reese are moving around the kitchen chatting comfortably to each other. They're not so much ignoring him, but rather are simply not including him. He's not sure if it's done on purpose, or just a habit they have gotten into of discussing the events of their day with their significant other. They are laughing softly at each other when he slips the wine glasses into the dishwasher. 

He offers to help them with the larger dishes that need to be hand washed, but they deny him, and so he retreats to the nearest wall there is to lean against, and begins to observe.

He can't help but be enchanted. 

In his last twelve years of solitary existence (well, not quite, perhaps more spiritual solitude, rather than physical), he's forgotten what it looks like to be in love. The grace that comes with it. He has to ask himself honestly, at this point, has he ever actually been in love? Has he ever anticipated each other's thoughts and movements like these two do?

Eventually they finish up, and there's an air of waiting, of unspoken questions. It's takes Malcolm a moment to realize it's directed at him. 

“Er,” he glances at his watch, but remains without any idea what time it is. “I guess I should be off.”

“Are you staying with the family?” Reese asks, and there's more than logistics in his question, something else Malcolm can't quite place.

“Um, no, I'm going to find a hotel, I think.”

Reese snorts, his eyes dodging to Dani for half a second, and she seems to have no objections. “Just stay here.”

Malcolm is not going to admit to himself that that is exactly what he was hoping would be the response. 

“I wouldn't want to impose...”

Dani waves him off impatiently. “Don't bother with that. You're family.”

He ignores his own surprise at her words.


	5. The Nose

The duplex is only slightly bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside—containing another bedroom and another half bath behind the main living space. Both seem unlawfully tiny, but he's slept in worse, so he helps Dani dress up the futon in the guest room/study as though it were a bed. Reese has run outside to grab Malcolm's duffel bag—completely forgotten after their tussle on the sidewalk. Malcolm sighs a thank you when it's handed back to him, knowing that everything inside of it will be terribly damp, just from the exposure to the Florida air. 

Dani points him in the direction of the bathroom and then takes her leave with a quick good night, but Reese lingers an unknown second while Malcolm steps out of his loafers. He turns to meet Reese's eyes a second later, lifting an eyebrow inquisitorially. 

His older brother scratches the back of his neck self-consciously before speaking. “I'm glad you're here, don't get me wrong,” he pauses an uncomfortable second. “But why now, after all this time?”

“I had some time off from the agency,” he answers vaguely. “I thought it was time.”

Reese is clearly unsatisfied by this answer, but has the sense to not pry further quite yet. This action is just yet another testament in Malcolm's mind to flipping of the universe in his absence. Reese does continue, though, eyes trained on his own feet. “When you left...things got really weird. There was so much happening, you know?”

Malcolm doesn't reply, but waits.

“Eventually we figured out that you weren't showing up for holidays for a reason. That there was something behind the fact that you'd only talk to dad on the phone and even then only for, like, ten seconds twice a year,” he says. “We just didn't know what that reason was.”

Another expectant pause, but no waiting reply.

“And then I went off to prison and Dewey went north and Francis and Piama had Siluk and we all just didn't mention the obvious, that you were mysteriously missing, that you never told anyone what you were doing or where you were or why you couldn't be there for all of these things happening.”

Reese descends into a scowl, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Textbook anger management technique, Malcolm thinks, just as prison psych would have taught it. 

“Eventually, you know...well, I guess you don't know, not yet,” he tapers off, opens his eyes again to see Malcolm's intent stare from his seat on the futon.

“I'm sorry,” Malcolm's voice is lighter than air when he says it, as though he's lost the strength to explain himself.

Reese scratches the back of his neck again, with eyes that are more than a little reproachful giving Malcolm a quick once over. “Yeah. Well, good night.”

With that, he turns on his heel and heads down the half dark hallway, feet thudding softly on the off white carpet. Malcolm heaves the deepest of sighs as he leans over to unzip his duffel bag, feeling a painful twist in his side that signifies the beginning of rough night. He pulls out a a t-shirt and sweatpants to sleep in, as well as a bottle of ibuprofen. In the orangy fluorescent light of a disgustingly yellow wallpapered bathroom, he stares at his own bloodshot eyes, throws back a couple of pills, and is reminded once again of how much of a bitch still healing ribs are. 

Lumbering back to his makeshift bedroom, he can't help but hear the scared, pitiful voice in his head ask itself if he'll ever feel normal again. He conjures up the memory of those Montmartre rooftops, tries to decide if he'd rather be there right now, alone and in his prime, or thoroughly lodged in this little piece of Tallahassee surreality and unnervingly broken. 

The strange sensation of damp clothes and dry air conditioning have him freezing by the time he slithers onto the brightly patterned futon, so he pulls up the extra blanket Dani left him. He lies on his back and stares at the gray popcorn ceiling for a good long while. And, though he begs for sleep, for release from his body and Reese's words, it doesn't come to him for some time.

m m m

The Florida sun wakes him early, and he's greeted by the sounds of a bustling household just down the hallway. Dishes clank in the sink, chairs are pushed in and out, and he can hear Dani and Reese's voices without making out their exact words. He waits a while before getting out, not quite ready to pull his world together again.

Half an hours passes, and the sun rises further, shedding more light through the tiny window above the desk to his right. As he grows more and more awake he begins to take in the small room's contents. Besides the laptop, the desk is littered with sticky notes, with stoic little sayings and lists. One of them he's pretty sure is a Shakespeare quote, and next to it is a note that simply says “Fight Club.” The others are completely untranslatable. 

He's known the woman for hardly twelve hours, but already he's abundantly sure that this is Dani's space. Or maybe it's just process of elimination, because his brother may have changed, but this particular manifestation of everyone's internal insanity is undeniably not Reese's brand. 

Playing background to the neon sticky notes are a few framed photographs and they immediately intrigue him enough to lure him silently from bed. He does a tentative stretch, testing his more sensitive injured spots, before bending over to get a closer glimpse of the photos. A few are, of course, of Reese and Dani in a few vacation spots that don't seem particularly exotic, but in it they look happy enough to be visiting the world's largest yarn ball, or whatever the hell it was. A few inches from these is what looks like a polaroid of Reese looking pensive, with what is clearly the duplex's disappointing, scraggly backyard behind him. He's not sure Reese has ever looked “pensive” before in his life, so it's entirely likely that his deep thoughts in this picture have something to do with the combination of blue and yellow. Malcolm glances behind him, finds the bookshelf he had been contemplating blankly from before, and lo and behold, there is an ancient polaroid camera. 

There's another photograph, this one of a very young Dani and a older boy who is clearly her brother, smiling cheekily at the camera. He skips over this one quickly, a fairly average family portrait of what are presumably the young Kilchers, and onto the more familiar faces in the next picture. The Wilkerson's, minus Malcolm, with their significant others, and dear god, their children. They are a couple of indisputable mini Francis/Piamas, in mid squirm for the snapshot in front of his childhood home, next to their parents. He tries not to have his mind blown by the idea of Francis having kids, and focuses his attention on a long haired, dark glasses wearing Dewey, who looks to be in his mid twenties or later, smiling in that somewhat subdued manner that seems unchanged since his youth. Standing next to him are the two brothers that Malcolm is ashamed to say he barely knows—Jamie, who in the picture must be high school age, and Cameron, who he has briefly met on holidays from Harvard when he was still a toddler, and now probably wouldn't even recognize him as family. 

He takes a step back from all of the memories, does a three-sixty of the room to distract himself. There's the bookshelf he's seen earlier, full of books he's entirely sure are Dani's (Reese is still Reese, fundamentally), and next to it a stand with a bass guitar that's covered in bumper stickers. An acoustic guitar leans against one wall, and what appears to be drumsticks are situated on a nearby shelf. A few pieces of art litter the walls, fairly generic landscapes, one that he thinks is probably the current overhead view of Tallahassee at night. 

He's realizes he's exhausted the mysteries of his bedroom, that it's time to step outside his faux cone of safety and into whatever the day will bring.


	6. The Expansion

Dani, he realizes, is far too good for Reese. Though he can't quite pinpoint why. 

Stepping out of his room, Malcolm nearly runs into her as she speed walks down the carpeted hallway. She's wearing some sort of dress pant and the kind of cheap blouse his mother would have worn (it hides any extra weight that had been more apparent in her t-shirt of last night), with black clogs on her feet. Her hair is put up in a loose bun, styled so that it looks unstyled, and her make up generic and only slightly enhancing. 

When they bump into each other she's jumpier than he is—understandable civilian behavior—gasping an exclamation in a language he thinks might be Brazilian Portuguese. She smiles quickly at him.

“Good morning! I'm sorry, I've gotta run if I'm gonna make it in time for my first class. There's breakfast stuff in the kitchen, you can take whatever you want.”

“You're a teacher?” he asks.

“Yeah. Elementary school music. But during the summer I help with a camp,” she replies, turning in the direction of the door. “Oh, and Reese has already left. It's early but he's the foreman so it's always sort of like that. Anyways, I'll see you later!”

The last words she shouts over her shoulder, grabbing her hand bag and dashing out the door. He gets the feeling that she has a tendency to ramble, when she's not in a hurry. 

He takes in all this about her, and yet still there is a magnetism to Dani Kilcher. A strange kalopsia that shrouds reality when she's around. He thinks it may have something to do with the way Reese looks at her, and he is reminded again how Wilkerson men fall in love: wholly. 

But as he hears her car pull out of the gravel driveway, his mind drifts to the fact that he has the day to himself, and no idea what to do with it. For a brain as powerful as his free time is hard to fathom, because there seems to always be pressure to be doing something brilliant. And the last twelve years of long overseas missions splattered with intervals of marathon paperwork in Langley have left him entirely unable to shut down and do nothing without panicking a little bit first. 

So to resolve this sudden panic at the thought of stagnation, he explores. And exploring for a CIA agent tends to be a bit different than the conventional definition. He ignores the part of him that reminds him of how last time he did this sort of “exploring” he nearly got his brain splattered against the pavement of Shanghai. 

But he figures Reese and Dani handle things in a differing manner than international criminals. And, he's not exactly planning on getting caught. 

He begins in the living room, small, the walls painted the same sort of muted green as the outside of the duplex. It's separated from the kitchen only by half a wall and a white-colored wrought iron partition that's rusting around the edges and is more for decoration than actually separating the two rooms. The couches are clean but not new, and the coffee table has several subtle chips on each leg. A magazine rack rests next to the front windows, and digging through it he finds several old copies of NME and Rolling Stone magazines. Dani's, without a doubt.

The kitchen cabinets are mismatched between natural wood color and a wood stain that looks as though it might have once been a light blue. Beyond this, though, is a whole lot of state of the art cookware, most of which Malcolm can't even put a name to. Obviously, Reese rules the kitchen. 

The refrigerator has a few bills on it, a performance schedule for a venue called The Marquis, and a few photographs similar to those he had seen in his bedroom—Dani and Reese, looking undeniably content. Next to these, a faded birth announcement for someone called Siluk Henry Wilkerson.

The rest of the dwelling is largely conventional—he checks the medicine cabinet of the full bath, finds no prescription drugs or suspicious needles. He's not sure what he'd do if he did find some, but checking just seems like the thing to do. 

The windows are small throughout the house, and yet somehow the Florida sun has penetrated every crevice by the time he infiltrates the master bedroom. He pushes all question of morality from his mind while simultaneously deciding to not look too far into this room. But it doesn't seem to contain too many secrets anyway, as it's not very big and is taken up mostly by a double bed that is made, but not particularly neatly. Two bureaus are crammed into the remaining space, around a half closed closet. Dani clearly sleeps on the right, as there is a pile of books on only one bedside table. He's backing out and closing the door a second later, acknowledging the bad taste in his mouth that has been rising since he started his exploration.

He takes a heavy seat in the sunny spot on one of the couches, already coming to the admittedly sickening realization of why he's gone on this little crusade around the house. The question has been following him like a second shadow around each corner, and yet to his own horror he's found no answer.

_Why is Reese's life so much more settled than his own?_

_Can life really be this unfair?_

If they are all to be perfectly honest, what in hell has Reese done to deserve a life where he's not only free of some sort of devastatingly long prison sentence, but actually living a relatively normal, happy existence? 

Malcolm has never felt so screwed over in his life, and yet he can't seem to direct his anger at anyone, so he face plants into a couch cushion and practically screams into the worn gray fabric, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

m m m

Midday arrives, and he gives himself a little pat on the back for putting on people clothes and eating some toast, though he doesn't feel the need for either. At some point, he makes the snap decision to go for a run, as he hasn't exercised vigorously, other than in physical therapy, since Paris. He finds a t-shirt and sweat pants, forgetting that going outside on a summer afternoon in this state is akin to a death wish.

But by some miracle he isn't completely flattened by the heat as he jogs across the small front lawn and out to the sidewalk. He is however, the only person in sight. Four blocks later, he's dripping with sweat even though he's gone at his slowest pace. 

The neighborhood is nice, but not really nice. The yards are all a little overgrown, the houses small but intact. It's fairly subdued, uneventful. Not a place he'd ever think that Reese would end up in.

But then again, he had always kind of assumed that Reese would be in prison for some remarkable act of ignorance. And he'd been right, because Reese is technically a convicted felon, for something he'd done while still living like his juvenile records would be sealed. Malcolm doesn't know the details of his armed robbery, of course, but his brother had got caught for a reason, and that reason was probably that he was acting like a massive dumb ass. 

Twenty minutes later he's turned a few corners and is coming into a more familiar part of town. His right flank has begun to hurt also, and not in a side stitch sort of way. He turns on to another road, and deduces that he's just two streets over from his childhood home. He realizes he doesn't even know if his parents still live there, or if another member of the family has taken it over. 

He thinks about heading over to check it out, but considers the rising ache in his bones and decides that it's about time to head back. 

m m m

He's showered and dressed in his usual suit by the time Reese stumbles in in the late afternoon, sweaty and with a light coating of rock dust on his clothes and skin. His t-shirt shows off just the edge of what is probably a very large tattoo on his back, and curving around each arm. Prison ink seems likely, and Malcolm finds himself pondering if Reese ruled prison like he ruled their elementary school playground; with absolute power and intimidation. 

“It's fucking hot out there,” he says in greeting to Malcolm, while scratching at a bead of sweat on his neck. “I was up in the crane all day and Liam told me heat rises. I dunno, it looked pretty hot on the ground too so I think he was just trying to psych me out.”

Malcolm raises an eyebrow at him, and doesn't bother to say anything other than, “Seems plausible.”

Reese begins to wander in the direction of the shower, when something occurs to Malcolm that sends a spike of terror through his chest. “Hold on, they let you handle heavy machinery?”

Reese turns to him, a familiar smirk on his face. “Yeah. It's pretty bad ass.”

And with that, he disappears into the hallway, leaving Malcolm to desperately try to erase that information from his mind.


	7. The Marquis

Dani arrives home an hour later, dumping her bag by the door and kicking off her shoes with an air of finality. She changes her tune, though, when she gets a glance at the refrigerator door.

Malcolm has just watched Reese spend twenty minutes with his head deep inside a spice cabinet, looking for something Malcolm can't even begin to pronounce. It reminds him briefly of the Thanksgivings that Reese used to cook for them, where inevitably at some point in the day he'd end up as one of Reese's cooking slaves. Until that time he barfed in the turkey. If there's one grudge the family has against him that Malcolm won't argue with, it's anything involving that particular incident. 

“Reese, I completely forgot, Shawna's playing at The Marquis tonight!” Dani cries urgently, eyeing the event schedule Malcolm had inspected earlier in the day as well.

“Huh?” says Reese, reaching for a colander.

“Shawna, you know, she started that band with her boyfriend. They call themselves The Dead Ringers, and I told her we'd go see their first show.”

Reese raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“C'mon, it'll be fun. We haven't gone out this week and Malcolm can come along if he wants,” she motions toward the colander and Reese's little pile of spices. “And you've not even gotten started on that yet so don't tell me I'm interrupting your process.”

Reese is still indecisive, so Malcolm chirps, “I'm in,” mostly because the thought of doing something, anything, is better than the lack of direction he experienced in the morning.

Finally, Reese shrugs and grabs his car keys, much to Dani's delight. 

The suffering heat has only eased somewhat as the sun sets behind the palm trees of the neighbor's yard as they climb into Reese's truck. The bed is filled with ladders and gravel and a big, high security tool box. The cab, which has just enough room for the three of them to squeeze in, is littered with half empty water bottles, marked up and half-dismembered blueprints, and a few cheeseburger wrappers, still with half a coating of grease on them. Dani spends the entire ten minute ride fiddling with the radio, trying to find a station that doesn't make the bile rise in her throat. 

The Marquis is a squat little brick building, practically overflowing onto the narrow street. Still, a line of people is hugging the decorative, graffiti'd wall while they wait to get in. It takes them a bit to find a parking space, and afterwards instead of joining the line, Dani marches right up to the bouncer and hugs him tightly, which clearly catches the large man off guard. 

“Hey, Charles,” she breaks away and stares up at him with a fluorescent smile. “Shawna specially invited us...you don't think you could let us—“

“Whose that guy?” Charles jabs a finger at Malcolm.

“He's my brother,” Reese replies. “Just in from DC.”

Charles takes in his suit and tie. “You a senator or something?”

Technically, he knows he shouldn't answer that as specifically as he wants to. But he knows himself well enough to be sure that he's gonna do it anyway. “CIA.”

“Shit, man, I'm not gonna mess with that,” Charles uses one beefy, pale hand to usher Dani in first. “Enjoy the show.”

The inside is warm and dark, with sound insulating panels duct taped to the ceiling, amongst the various air conditioning ducts and vents. The walls are painted black, with white stripes curling like ribbon around speakers and posters. A bar lines the left side, and a few wobbly tables occupy a back corner. Most people have begun to group, standing, in front of the stage, where a girl is setting up amplifiers and a drum kit that sparkles in the theater lights. Malcolm honestly can't remember the last time he's been to a concert for his own enjoyment, rather than just pursuing someone while undercover. 

Dani meanders off to get drinks, and so Reese and Malcolm join the growing crowd. 

“So, do you have any idea if The Dead Ringers are gonna be any good?” Malcolm asks.

“I dunno,” Reese replies. “Drawn in all these people, though.”

“All that means is that Shawna's good at publicizing.”

Reese's brow furrows. “Why do you have to be like that?”

“Like what? Like myself?”

“You're just down on everything. Just like when we were kids.” It's not quite an insult, more of an observation that just so happens to be offensive. Largely because it obliviously hits Malcolm right where it hurts the worse: the sense of his own idle life. “I mean, when's the last time you were actually excited about something?” Reese adds in an undertone. 

Dani arrives then with cheap beer, which at one point might have solved everything. Reese doesn't accept his, though, muttering an excuse about going to see if Shawna and Erik needed help carrying anything.

“What the hell was that about?” Dani shoots at him.

Malcolm just shakes his head. “You know he's got the IQ of a squirrel right?”

She looks puzzled for a second, before snorting a reply. “I'd say he's pretty good for a squirrel. And if that's true, than brains certainly aren't everything.”

She doesn't say anything so explicit, but under her statement is a deeper jab, as she undoubtedly has some grasp of Malcolm's computing power at this point. It is, undeniably, a subtle aim at his current state of solitariness, voicing the silent question: _where has your mind gotten you?_

“In the end, though, he's got what matters. He cares about the people he loves, he knows he's not got the smarts to bother telling lies, and he is unfailingly loyal,” her forehead creases indignantly. “Christ, with fundamentals like that, what woman wouldn't want him?”

Malcolm chokes on a combination of his drink and his own sudden intake of air. “Did you just say loyalty? Do you have any idea how many times we sold each other down the river growing up?”

She nods as though she expected him to put forth that argument. “Consider the fact that the majority of your family is or has been pissed at you for your absence at some point in the last twelve years. Then consider that the remaining percentage, almost entirely Reese, has simply been awaiting your return.”

He pauses, not breathing. “They're all mad at me, then?”

“Francis and your mother, mostly, 'cause you only called your dad when you called at all. Dewey goes in and out, I think. Cameron and Jamie say their memories of you are not as clear, so they seem to sway with whatever the rest of the family is leaning towards,” she settles brown eyes on his bewildered expression. “You didn't really think you wouldn't hurt them, did you?”

He has to remind himself that not once in his lifetime has his family ever mastered the art of “forgiving and forgetting.”

“They don't understand...” his mind is in a fog, because five minutes ago he would not have thought that his life could actually get more complicated. 

“How could they?” Dani cuts him off, and in her eyes he detects that this has been bothering her all along, probably because it's affecting Reese, and probably because they've entered the unspoken agreement from day one to not mention Malcolm's return to any other member of the family. And they all know that can't go on forever. 

Reese fights his way through the audience to meet up with them again just moments before the band begins to play, and any hope of continuing his conversation with Dani is drowned out with the sound of the first heavy chord.


End file.
